The Riviera Riddle: Why Golf’s Greatest Players Keep Coming Up Empty at Hollywood’s Favorite Course

There’s a peculiar curse hanging over Riviera Country Club—one that has baffled me across 35 years of covering this tour. It’s the kind of mystery that keeps you up at night nursing a scotch, wondering how two of the three greatest golfers who ever lived could never, not even once, win at a place that practically screams their names.

This week’s Genesis Invitational marks the 100th anniversary of what started as the Los Angeles Open, played at Riviera 60 times. In all that history, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods—the two consensus GOATs of professional golf—remain winless. And here’s where it gets genuinely interesting: Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy appear to be following the same script.

I’ve covered enough tournaments to know when something isn’t just coincidence. This is a pattern. And it tells us something profound about Riviera that goes way beyond fairway geometry.

A Course That Demands Everything

Let me be clear: Riviera isn’t a fluke venue. It’s a legitimate test of championship golf. The course asks for length off the tee, elite approach play to quirky greens, outstanding short-game skill, and exceptional speed control on those finicky Poa Annua surfaces. Multiple dimensions. All of them punished.

Jordan Spieth, who genuinely loves this place, nailed it when he said:

“It just requires all parts of the game and a variety of ball-striking. And then once you’re on the greens, you’ve got to have great speed control. It’s an all-around fantastic golf course that you don’t get away with poor shots at all.”

But here’s what strikes me after watching hundreds of tournaments: Riviera doesn’t just demand excellence. It demands a specific *kind* of excellence. And that’s where the pattern becomes fascinating.

The Lefty Advantage Nobody’s Really Talking About

Look at the recent winners. Phil Mickelson—two times. Bubba Watson—three times. Mike Weir—two times. What do they have in common? They’re all left-handers. And all three of them have also won at Augusta National, where that same left-handed shotmaking ability thrives on sloped greens.

Spieth recognized this when discussing Watson’s dominance:

“It’s why Bubba likes it so much, because of the shotmaking ability that he has and it just brings the feel out in his game.”

In my experience caddying for Tom Lehman back in the ’90s, I learned that certain courses favor certain skill sets, and lefties have a particular advantage when courses demand that creative ball-shaping around the greens. Riviera, with its emphasis on working the ball into pins from difficult angles, plays right into that strength.

But here’s the puzzle: both Nicklaus and Woods were extraordinary shot-shapers. They both played fades. They both dominated Augusta. So why not Riviera?

The Mystery Neither GOAT Could Solve

I’ve always believed that the best golf stories are the ones that don’t have clean answers. Nicklaus, in 1994, was characteristically honest about his Riviera struggles:

“I’ve had some pretty good rounds here but never four that were good enough to win.”

Twelve starts at the Genesis Invitational and two PGA Championships. Fourteen opportunities. Two second-place finishes. Nothing more.

Tiger fared slightly better with 16 attempts yielding two runner-up finishes, but similarly, he never cracked the winner’s circle. And both men proved they could win repeatedly at Torrey Pines and Pebble Beach—other California courses with the same Poa Annua grass. So it wasn’t the greens. It wasn’t the geography. It was something about Riviera specifically.

What strikes me is that neither player ever fully explained it, because neither player fully understood it. Sometimes in golf, greatness runs into a wall it simply cannot climb. And that’s okay. It’s humbling. It’s real.

Are We Watching History Repeat Itself?

Now we have Scheffler and McIlroy, the two finest players of this generation. Scheffler has never finished better than seventh and hasn’t come within eight shots of the lead. McIlroy’s best effort is a fourth-place finish in 2019, but he’s faded since then, never coming within nine shots in his last three attempts.

Is Riviera about to claim a third generation of superstars? Maybe. But I’m hesitant to declare it inevitable. McIlroy, in particular, is the kind of player who learns from patterns. He’s studied Augusta his entire career. He understands that some courses demand adjustment, even from the very best.

Scheffler, meanwhile, is so transcendently talented that I’ve learned not to bet against him anywhere. He has time to crack this code. And Rory’s a competitor who doesn’t shy away from challenges.

The Beauty of the Unsolved Mystery

What I appreciate most about this Riviera riddle is that it reminds us why we love golf. Even with modern analytics, biomechanics, and equipment technology, there are still mysteries. There are still courses that seem to have a personality, a way of selecting their champions that defies conventional wisdom.

Riviera doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t care about your major count or your world ranking. It has its preferences, and some of the greatest players who ever lived never figured out how to satisfy them.

That’s not a weakness in those players. That’s the strength of the course. And it’s precisely why, after 100 years, the Genesis Invitational remains genuinely unpredictable.